[Buddha-l] Buddhism and Psychology becomes unfalsifiable

[Bob Zeuschner]

Hi Dan --
I must admit that I am a bit surprised that you somehow feel confident 
to diagnose the psychological problems of a fellow scholar based on a 
few lines of an e-mail message.
That what you wrote is consistent with the structure of Freud is not at 
issue; what I want to know is if there is any reason to think that it is 
true?

Besides, I am not talking about whether or why another person feels 
sexual attraction.
It is the general Freudian enterprise that I am uncomfortable with.

Let me respond to your defense of the Freudian unconscious.
I have no problem with a literary unconscious, with forgotten memories 
which are difficult to dredge up. I have no problem with seeds buried in 
the _alaya-vijnana_ as a metaphor for memory.

But, Freud's unconscious is NOT the literary unconscious, not the realm 
of memories and forgotten experiences.
Freud's unconscious is a second consciousness (like a separate buried 
person), a consciousness which resembles our ordinary consciousness 
except this three-part unconscious-consciousness can think for itself, 
can perceive, can remember, can scheme, can cause us to hurt ourselves, 
to trip, to send us coded messages while we dream in extraordinary 
symbolic forms, and can even cause us to mis-speak in very clever and 
humorous ways. This unconscious sends messages about disguised wishes, 
etc. etc. One part of this unconscious (ego) tries to fool another part 
of our unconscious (id) by substituting dreams for reality, etc.
The existence of the complex Freudian unconscious is not supported by 
simple references to "our unconscious."

I have to say that the psychology professors at my college consider 
Freud an important part of the history of psychology, but do not 
consider his theories worth even one chapter of their text books.

Bob

On 9/6/2010 10:10 PM, Dan Lusthaus wrote:
> Bob,
>
>> Freud (or the therapist) was the only one who knew or who could know --
>
> This is silly.
>
>
> Repression is already showing.
>
> When that person is told that such an idea confirms the oedipal theory (one
> might add transference and several other things Freud discusses), and he
> *strongly* denies it, that's objectively observable repression.

No. the only way you can assert this is IF you had already established 
the accuracy of Oedipal theory, which most of my colleagues in 
psychology consider a reflection of Freud's problems, not a universal 
condition.


>
> Not the therapist's secret.
>
>> My understanding is that the claim that we repress stuff we find painful
>> is not borne out by contemporary non-Freudian therapists.
>
> "Pain" is one reason. There are many. People have been denying there is an
> unconscious from the moment Freud uncovered it, and this facile dismissal of
> repression is part of that denial and attack. The unconscious makes people
> squirm, since it not only holds all the dirty secrets about themselves they
> prefer not to have anyone, including themselves look it; it's dark and dirty
> in there, there are spiders, you might poke your eye out (to quote Firesign
> Theater).

See above about the Freudian unconscious.

>
>> The claim seems to be unfalsifiable.
>
> Can you falsify that the sun exists?** So does repression.
>
> Dan
>
> **  (yeah, every night!)

To falsify "the sun exists" is not to look into space at night.
Empirical claims are all falsifiable [except perhaps the claim that all 
empirical claims are falsifiable ...].
The way a claim is NOT unfalsifiable is if we can answer "what would we 
expect to perceive if there were no star shining nearby?"
Because we can answer that question, the claim that "the sun exists" is 
falsifiable, it is not unfalsifiable.